2012.08.31 17:34
a whole bunch of...
“The Objectification of the Deterritorialized Whole[nesses]”
extreme wholeness
fertile wholeness
conceptual wholeness
assimilating wholeness
metabolic wholeness
pregnant wholeness
osmotic wholeness
electro-magnetic wholeness
omni-frequency wholeness
next chapter?
“The Objectification of the Deterritorialized Partial Vision”
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2012.09.02 09:49
a whole bunch of...
As mentioned by the second and third posters, this thread is a reaction to the "perennial whole" blog and its comments.
tammuz, you slip a bit in your opening statements (regarding the Ka'ba). You are presuming to know what my understanding of "electro-magnetic architecture" is, thus your comment more only stems from your understanding (--or at least tell us what you see my understanding of "electro-magnetic architecture" to be). It is not the Ka'ba itself that I see presenting a "conceptual wholeness," rather it is the perennial event of which the Ka'ba is the center that presents a conceptual wholeness (of Islam).
The Villa Savoye presents an extreme case of assmilating wholeness because the elements of architecture have been so absorbed to the point of 'ethnic cleansing', thus, if not exactly manifesting a 'racially pure' architecture, at least a highly homogenized architecture.
I'm still trying to come to grips with "omni-frequency" myself. The gist of the notion, however, emanates from the concentrated confluence of all the senses to the point of an enveloping cognition.
In "The Obligation Toward the Difficult Whole" Venturi speaks to the ease of designing a whole (building) via exclusion versus the difficulty of designing a whole (building) via inclusion. I find it interesting that Giurgola, at the same time (and place), wrote about taking the "partial view" toward design(ing). I hope to investigate this coincidence more closely, and both examples begin this thread in reaction to the 'perennial whole' blog.
To say "that all the wholenesses [I] refer[red] to are "tropic wholenesses"" is to prematurely reterritorialize the "systems". I am not using 'fertile', 'assimilating', 'metabolic', etc. as "figures of speech in which the words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning" (i.e., trope). What I have done is deterritorialize (although still keep whole) the literal meanings of the words (from [describing] operational systems of the body to [describing] operational systems of the imagination).
2012.11.24 18:55
22 November
So far t. is only imagining "a deliberately subversive (therefore simply 'subversive) reenatment would be interpretive - i.e. the actual aim/message of the subversive reenactment would be subversion not reenactment." I would like to see an example of "a deliberately subversive (therefore simply 'subversive) reenatment would be interpretive - i.e. the actual aim/message of the subversive reenactment would be subversion not reenactment" Also, can you provide an example of a "pure re-enactment [that] is perhaps too revivalist in nature to be subversive"?
Another example of Le Corbusier subversively reenacting the Villa Savoye is the upper half of the Governor's Palace designed for Chandigarh.
Actually, subversively isn't really the right term. Le Corbusier metabolically reenacts the Villa Savoye.
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2012.12.04 17:35
How can architects help the Gaza strip people?
I have never maintained that "creativity is inherently metabolic." What I am fond of reminding you is that the metabolic process is a creative/destructive duality. [gwharton, if you don't see the distinction there, then perhaps you are not as smart as you think you are.]
Regarding Israel and (the) metabolic (process), here are two things I've already written:
A future chronosomatic note may concern itself with the Jewish psyche and it's relationship with reenactment, e.g., the contemporary state of Israel. With the Holocaust corresponding to the transverse colon, as do all contemporary genosidal purges, and the forthcoming end of assimilation in 2194, is today's Israel the ur-metabolic state?
2003.02.22
...the metabolic urbanism of contemporary Israel.
2004.02.13
2012.12.04 18:07
How can architects help the Gaza strip people?
Creativity is not inherently metabolic because creativity can just as well operate assimilatingly (or osmoticly, or conceptionally, or with omni-frequency).
Imagine how different Israel would be if it operated assimilatingly rather than metabolically.
Imagine how different Israel would be if it operated osmotically rather than metabolically.
Imagine how different Israel would be if it operated conceptionally rather than metabolically.
Imagine how different Israel would be if it operated with omni-frequency rather than metabolically.
2012.12.04 18:17
How can architects help the Gaza strip people?
Again, I never wrote about the metabolic nature of creativity (as if all creativity were somehow metabolic). I wrote about the dual, creative/destructive operation of the metabolic process, and, hence, the dual, creative/destructive operation of the metabolic imagination. But never did I infer that then all creativity stems from the metabolic imagination.
2013.06.12 19:08
Post something that soothes your soul, damn it !
image: Timepiece Gauge
The Time Machine Incarnate, the ever upward lift of the plane of the present.
In the year 2525, osmosis expanding outward, metabolism shrinking inward, and the structural network steadily growing toward full circle.
2014.01.06 21:48
SHENZHEN
I really don't know Wigley, but fourteen years ago, he and I had a mostly private conversation over lunch (we both have a schizophrenic brother), and the next evening I sat next to him at a Zengelis/Gigantis Thankgiving dinner party. Plus we talked about bidding at eBay in the car that was giving me a ride back to my hotel--he was slightly upset by usually being outbid on items he wanted, and I teased him that I got that item. As I'm thinking back to those conversations, it's kind of refreshing how much I'm able to remember about them. I started our first conversation by telling him that (because I knew he too was going to be at the conference) I decided to read something written by him in case I might meet him. I read "Untitled: The Housing of Gender." I told him I had to stop reading it because it was making me uncomfortably question too many things about my own 'housing' and 'gender'. He broadly smiled in agreement because I seem to have gotten exactly what the essay was about. And from there we just started talking about all kinds of stuff.
In terms of set-piece or process, I'd say multiple choice as in:
column A
set-piece
process
column B
fertility
conception
assimilation
metabolism
pregnancy
osmosis
electromagnetism
all-frequency
column C
architecture
urbanism
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2014.09.11 09:45
The End of History?
"Most prevalent in our time: the assimilating imagination, the metabolic imagination."
It's still over a millennium before the osmotic imagination and the electro-magnetic imagination are the most prevalent. Humanity's furthest reach occurs almost exactly the year 4000. But then the ultimate cut-off happens 4371, which ushers in approximately 1780 years of all-frequency imagination. And after that humanity is simply a nimiety of keratin.
2014.09.15 11:52
The End of History?
The point of my [prior] post was to provide an alternative view to 'the end of history', one that sees the end (starting) over 4000 years from now.
The metabolic duality tilts slightly toward the creative, as destructive metabolism--catabolism--harbors some constructive properties.
Overall, I'm referring to stages of human imaginations and not some sort of stages of de-corporalisations.
Coincidentally, I just finished dossier: metabolism metabolic (going back almost exactly 20 years). Some of it seems far-fetched, almost all of it is unpolished, and it's there now to see if an actual working thesis could come out of it.
For me it is indeed strange going back to 1994.
2014.09.15 16:01 from tammuz
The End of History?
Quondam,
I understand that you've described different stages/types of imaginations, a reference being here-o/0007. I was trying to delve into it and perhaps understand it for myself. I also find it interesting material to think about.
Just a few points:
1- While understanding the above, would not the resultant outcomes of these imaginations not demonstrate the nature of the imagination construing them and really the premise behind this imagination (a chicken and egg kind of order; after all the imagination must be based upon some connection to a concurrent reality and vice versa) ? Furthermore, you speak of osmotic/assimilating/etc imaginations and, separately, osmotic/assimilating/etc architectures. Therefore, in a way of responding to my own question...having started reading Monoe's writing on Stirling in the Theoretical anxiety book, one could say that Moneo is describing what could amount to a prodigiously assimilative imagination that has produced different architectures, at different phases, many of which were not, in themselves as architecture, assimilative.
Therefore, perhaps you end up with a theory of an imagination and another one altogether of the product of the imagination.
2- Seperately, since you propose an electromagnetic imagination as a forthcoming phase - en lieu of an around-the-corner finality- I was wondering whether an electro-magnetic imagination would be based on actuality of tending towards the electromagnetic - ie. our reality, technologies and so on- which implies -as an outcome- a virtual decorporalisation since the denominator here -even by figurative association- is the magnetic field generated, the charge of electrons and so on. Movement dictated by the nature of poles -not things- and relational pull on the basis of differential charge(Lit.)= Associations (Imagination) that transcend embodied presence to fluctuate, in a virtual air, between -perhaps- poles of previous imagination (Fig.), operating within an archive of everything that has ever been, knowledge-wise, maybe?
I can see how to approach osmotic, metabolic and assimilating; their modi operandi are somewhat eponymous, even if by way of figurative language. But electro-magenetic still puzzles me.
3- Also, I guess thirdly, another question: While I understand that you propose these as different types of imaginations that rein over different stages of human history (correct me if I'm wrong), is it not possible to use these as atemporal tools by which to cognize the different natures of past and present historical occurences and movements - in the vein of, for example, describing a baroque moment, be it in a pre- or post- baroque era?
You already hint at it here-3390x:
The Pyramids, Stonehenge, St. Peter's (Vatican), Bilbao(?) -- extreme, extreme architectures.
The Pantheon, Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, entry sequence of Schinkel's Altes Museum, Kimball Art Gallery -- examples of the best osmotic architecture there is.
Classical Greek and Roman Architecture -- pure architecture of fertility.
The Hindu Temple -- the ultimate transcendence from an architeture of fertility to an architecture of pregnancy, whereas the Gothic Cathedral is an architecture of pregnancy, albeit virginal.
All of 20th century Berlin -- the metabolic (create and destroy and create and destroy and ...)
To understand architecture of assimilation, look at the Renaissance, but also look to early 20th century Purism to understand assimilation in the extreme, ie, purge.
Today's architectures are by and large assimilating and/or metabolic (contextual and/or 'deconstructivist'?).
You're very lucky if you ever see pure examples of electromagnetic or frequency architectures today because they are almost entirely architectures of the far off future.
There are many more examples to offer, but that's all for now. In general, I see all architectures as reenactionary (as opposed to reactionary).
Architecture reenacts human imagination, and human imagination reenacts the way the human body is and operates. The human body and the design thereof is THE enactment. The human imagination then reenacts corporal morphology and physiology, and architecture then reenacts our reenacting imaginations.
But interestingly, I again find this chasm between the description of an imagination and that of the architecture. Unless I have misunderstood. Do you mean that the design implication/intention/allusion of the Schinkel Altes Museum points to the osmotic (I could interpret that in conceiving of the façade as being rendered a permeable one, for instance) or that the imagination that bore it submitted itself to a process of osmosis from other sources? This comes back to item 1. The difference I'm imagining, would that be valid?
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2014.09.15 17:41
The End of History?
I honestly don't know if I can answer any of your questions adequately, so whatever I write here now is not to be taken as anything definitive.
The source of the various imaginations comes from the physiological processes that occur within the body. That is to say that the brain acts assimilatingly, or metabolically or osmotically, etc. That's my (short) answer to the origin of the operations. (This is perhaps the most far-fetched conclusion, yet it was learning about the various physiologies of the body and then wondering whether the brain might have the same physiologies that sparked the notion of various human imaginations. Thus, in general, any answers as to origin are to be looked for within the body itself.)
The notion of electro-magnetism and electro-magnetic imagination comes from the notion that the human heart operates as an electro-magnet, and what the heart pumps (blood) is what makes it pump. Is the heart then like a perpetual engine? Interesting, electro-magnetic radiation defines light. Is the electro-magnetic imagination a perpetual beat of light? Who knows?
Since I feel as if my own imagination is slowly showing signs of ossification, meaning pliability has begun to harden, the implication of your third question is perhaps the best all these notions may ever be useful for, if useful at all. But, then again, the answers really shouldn't come from me, but rather from how the body operates.
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